OVC Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Program: FY 2022 Grantee Orientation Reporting and Monitoring Webinar

MARLENE MACK: You've been invited here today, because you've been awarded the Fiscal Year 2022 Victim Services Set Aside Grant, we'd like to welcome you to the grantee community. So let's get started. Just a few housekeeping items, this session is going to be recorded, and will be available to the public on the OVC TVSSA website in about 10 days. We dropped a link in the chat for you to utilize to get access to that recording.

Throughout our session today, please enter your questions through the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen instead of the chat. This will help us identify and address your questions very quickly. Please use the chat feature today for general communication with hosts and fellow participants, and to find resources our presenters will share today.

To help with audio quality, all lines are in listening mode, if you are listening through the computer, please select the speakers or headphones you wish to use. If you are experiencing any technical issues with a session, please let us know in the chat box, or email our technical support by using the email address on the screen [email protected].

If you haven't already done so, please use the chat now to tell us where you're from, and say hello to the group. And finally, for close captioning, please see and click on the CC button at the lower left of your screen. Now to Jessica from OVC Tribal Division to get us started.

JESSICA ANDREW: Thank you, Marlene, and thank you everyone for joining us today, and it is my pleasure to be with you for our second webinar of this new grantee webinar series, and this session is going to focus on reporting and compliance, focusing heavily on that reporting aspect, so that you can get a better understanding of your responsibilities as an awardee of these federal funds. And just so you know, I am joined by my colleagues from the Performance Measurement Team, who will provide an overview of programmatic requirements on how to submit your reports into the systems, and answer any questions that you may have. And then we're going to hear from our friends from TFMC, who is your financial training and technical assistance provider.

TFMC is going to talk a little bit more about financial reporting, also known as FFR, how to submit these reports, and then provide you with some tips and tricks for your submission. But before we get started, we did want to start off with a polling question. So on your screen, you should see a popup, and we would like to know what your role is under fiscal year 2022 TVSSA. Are you focusing more on direct services, focusing on reporting, or do you have another task that you focus in on? So just click what applies best. Okay, we'll give that another one or two seconds, and I'll ask Lauren to please close it, so we can see those results. Okay. So nearly half of you actually focus on the financial assets.

So submitting financial reports and draw downs, we have a few people that are turning out direct victim services, and the other half is really focusing on performance writing. So thank you all for being here, and we hope that this information that we share today is going to help you with your duties as it relates to reporting. So on this next screen, what I wanted to do is just to kind of provide a visual of the general stages of OJP's grant management cycle, which starts with your package, where you accepted the award, and it eventually ends with the award closeout. And over the next few slides, we're really going to touch on the important aspects related to reporting and monitoring. So focusing in on slide four and five.

But some of the highlights that I did want to touch on is some of what you already are working on. So accessing your award package and JustGrants, accepting the award, reviewing your special conditions of the award document, and then as you continue, as you gain access to your fund, focusing in on managing the project in accordance with the requirements, the standards, and the guidelines contained in your grant package. One of the other tasks that you're going to be working on is submitting all the required reports. So that progress report, that financial report that we talked about, completing any required deliverables that you said that you were going to work on in your application, other things that are written in the solicitations, or maybe included in your special conditions, and then again, at the very end, focusing in on closeout, where you close the award at the end of your performance period. And so again, for the purpose of today's discussion, we're really going to focus heavily on that reporting and monitoring.

But before we go into heavily on reporting requirements, and outlining what those requirements are, and those standards and guidelines, we first wanted to remind you about the team that is here to support you. So throughout your award, you're going to have access to an amazing team, an amazing support team, and so it starts with your OVC grant managers. So we are here to support you for any administrative, programmatic, or financial needs that you may have to provide training and technical assistance, you also have access to programmatic TA, so we have T-VSTTA, which stands for Tribal Victim Services Training and Technical Assistance Program, and they can help you with any questions that you have regarding delivering, I'm sorry, developing deliverables, if you need help developing a community needs assessment, have questions about your program narrative, or general questions about progress reporting, or even how to develop a victim service program. T-VSTTA will be your go-to support system for that. We also have TFMC.

So TFMC has been around since 2018, and since that time, they have been doing a wonderful job helping grantees with budget modifications, filling out their federal financial reports, helping you address audit inquiries and other tasks related to financial management. And then we also have the PMT and JustGrants help desk. So those teams are on standby anytime that you have any questions related to the performance measurement tool, performance reporting, and of course if you have issues with JustGrants, we have that team available too. So again, as you move forward in your journey, we want you to know that you have a support system in place, and we are all here to help you the best that we can. So next, I want to talk a little bit more about monitoring. So on the first couple of slides, when I was talking about the life cycle of the award, one piece of it is that monitoring aspect. And in last year's, I'm sorry, in last week's session, we talked a little bit about OVC's responsibilities and expectations for grant managers.

The biggest part of that is obviously being there to support you throughout your process, but also monitoring the awards. So the role of the grant manager really is to review the grant terms, the objectives, the conditions, contact you, and discuss the requirements of the grant to make sure you're adhering to them, and then monitoring compliance for programmatic, administrative, fiscal requirements, as it relates to federal statutes, policy guidelines, and making sure that you're implementing the project as you stated in your application. And then the other part of our monitoring focuses on desk reviews and site visits, again, we're collecting all of the information that I just described, as well as ensuring that the data that you're reporting is accurate and consistent with the application. We approve progress reports, approve modifications, and of course, again, focusing on monitoring visits to review your activities of the grants. And these are all forms of active monitoring to ensure that you are supported throughout your award period, and compliant with federal standards and regulations. So on this next slide, I just briefly wanted to, just to touch on, just kind of highlight what the purposes of our monitorings are for, whether it's via phone, email, in-person visit, it truly is an opportunity for us to learn more about your programs, how you're using funds throughout Tribal community to support the communities that you serve, that monitoring aspect, and to provide training and technical assistance. So if there is needs that you have, that you need assistance with, whether it's access to JustGrants, understanding your fiscal responsibilities when it comes to how you use your funds, or progress reporting, we're there to assist you with that. And as we are talking a little bit about monitoring, I just wanted to also put on the slide is the different options that we have. So you may hear a grant manager say that "We are doing a desk review."

Desk reviews are done annually to see the progress of the award, to check in with you to see how things are going, at times, you may hear that a grant manager is going to be doing a enhanced programmatic desk review. This is also known as an EPDR, you may just hear it mostly referenced as a offsite desk review or offsite remote visit, remote visit, probably more of what you hear. And again, this is to learn more about the programs and what you're doing, and the other option is for onsite monitoring. So I wanted to provide a little bit of background about these different monitoring options there. So as you start to interact with your grant managers, you're going to start to hear these terms. Desk reviews, onsite monitoring, and again, the major purpose of this is for us provide training and technical assistance, as well as to help you make sure that you are compliant with your award conditions, and what you said that you were going to see with your application. And then this next slide is also talking about additional monitoring that you may see, so you may receive a monitoring visit from OCFO, who is our financial officer.

Their desk reviews and their site visits heavily focused on the financial aspects of your awards, and then you also may receive a review from the OIG, and if you receive any of these type of monitoring visits, and if there's anything that you need assistance with, again, we're here to support you, as well as TFMC and TSF. So that was a really brief rundown of monitoring. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in our next webinar series, but I just wanted to kind of touch on that, because that's going to be relevant in this next discussion, where we're talking about our mandatory reporting requirements. Because we only have roughly two hours today, what we are going to focus in on is bullet one and five, where we're talking about progress reporting, and also financial reporting. And before we get started with that, I did want to open it up with a polling question just to see how many, what your experience is with the performance measurement tool and reporting. So if you wouldn't mind entering in your feedback into the polling question, and again, I know that over 50% of you focus on financial aspects, so hit never used it, if that's not your scope of work. And we'll give that one more second, and I'll ask Lauren to close that for us.

Okay. Okay, great. Okay, so it's consistent, so almost half of you said that you've never used it, but of course that's expected, because most of you focus heavily on the financial aspect of your awards, many have said, "Hey, we've used it on a regular basis", and a couple of people have said that they need a little bit of help. So, and roughly around 25% said that it does not fall within your current responsibilities. So we hope that this next part of our presentation is going to be informative for all of you, not only is it going to be talking a little bit about the performance measure, but also a little bit about how to operate within JustGrants, and to submit your application, I'm sorry, to submit your reporting in there. So next, I'm going to turn it over to Tina from the PMT team, and she's going to talk you through a little bit about the performance measurement tool, and again, reporting. So thank you.

TINA DIMACHKIEH: Thank you so much, Jessica, and thank you all for having us here with you today. So we are the performance management team, the PMT, and we are responsible for the PMT, and the performance measures, and reporting for your OVC awards from the performance measurement side.

So I'm Tina Dimachkieh, I'm a training and technical assistance on the Performance Management Team, we all support OVC grant managers, and OVC grantees with all of their reporting requirements for their OVC awards. So today I'm going to be talking to you about a bunch of stuff, but mostly it's all around performance measures.

This is where we come in, right? We talk about performance measures, we help you identify what data you're going to be collecting for a grant activity on your OVC award, how you're going to be measuring your goals and objectives, and the progress towards your goals and objectives, but we'll be talking about all of that in our slides today.

So to begin, what are performance measures? Performance measures are specific value or characteristics that measure the output of a grantee's activities, grant activities, and services demonstrating accomplishment of the goals and objectives of your OVC program, those goals and objectives that were developed in your proposal, that were approved when you received the award, and that you will be working on for the three-year-lifecycle of the award. So performance measures are really what you'll need to start collecting as soon as your grant activity begins. And what they can do for us at the OVC level, and that your grant manager's level, and at the leadership at OVC, what can they do for us?

Performance measures can answer a lot of questions, as you see on the screen here. Through you all, and through the data that you will be collecting from the work that you're completing with your OVC award, we'll be able to find out who are the individuals that are being served, and who is providing the services. We can find out the types of services that are being provided, and what types of organizations are serving the victims and the individuals that are coming forth for services. We can also identify when the services are being provided, and how the grant funding is being applied for the services, where the programs are located across OVC awards, across the country, and territories as well, and which jurisdictions are being served across different states that are receiving awards from OVC. We also are able to track the victimization types, which helps us understand why individuals are seeking services, and why the OVC funding is being used.

But also it will help us understand how to better allocate funds, and how to better support the victim services field. So this data that you all are collecting is extremely important. The accuracy and the timeliness of the data is extremely important, because we do look at these numbers, our team, we have a team of analysts that looks at the data and the numbers, and that generates reports that I will show you in a moment, and that really help inform decisions at the OVC leadership level around the victim services field, and the funding that can be provided for our victims. So with the performance measures and the data that you all are providing, we can create state profiles, we can create topical snapshots, we can just, as I said, really better be informed in making decisions at the leadership level at OVC, and really better advocate for funding for victim services.

Some of the data-driven decisions have come from the funding efforts over time and location, over service reach and gap analysis that we've done, trend analysis and data visualizations and mapping that we've been able to do all with the OVC grantees help by collecting all this data for us. Here are two examples, I'm sorry if it's a little bit blurry, but these are two examples of items that we've been able to create that have been very helpful. So state profile, we were able to identify how much funding is being provided over fiscal years, how many sub-awards are available, how many organizations are receiving OVC funding across the state, where the hot areas are, what types of victimizations are highly being experienced, and also demographics of individuals that are receiving OVC services within that specific state.

Demographics are around race and ethnicity, around age and around gender. So it's very informative information. And then on the right hand side, you have the topical snapshot. This is specific to Tribal serving victim services, this was developed, again, based on data that you all and your program have had provided to us, where we were able to really understand what is happening in the Tribal serving victim services field, and generate reports for you all to use. Okay, so this is all fantastic and great for OVC, right? But what does that all mean to you at the grantees level? What do performance measures mean to you and what does measurement mean to you all? So performance measures, again, the best way to say it is, it's collecting information or data that shows achievement of desired goals and results. Think of those goals as your OVC award goals and objectives.

That's what we are looking for and trying to measure progress on, performance measures are parameters against which progress for those goals and objectives is being assessed. Again, what does that mean, in real life for OVC grantees? What does this all mean? What do you all need to be doing? This slide, I love the slide, because it really explains it perfectly of what exactly are you supposed to do now that you have an OVC award, and we keep talking about performance requirements, performance reporting, and performance measures.

So you need to make sure that at your organization, if you have the capabilities to capture and securely save performance measure data, that we are asking for, the questions and the performance measures that we're asking for, that you have the ability to collect that information at your organization, and if you don't, you should reach out to us, so we can provide some technical assistance, and share some tools, data collection tools with you to help you get started, as you start working on your grant activity. You also should be tracking the data that you're collecting, and with that, you need to understand what the performance measures are, be be able to define them as they apply to the work that you are doing with your OVC awards and objectives, and you need to make sure that you're creating consistency in data reporting at the organizational level.

You also, with the tracking and understanding what the measures are, you need to make sure that your staff members understand what the measures are, and anybody that is working with that OVC award also understands what the data that's being collected is. Then you are responsible for actually reporting the data that you are collecting and tracking. With that, you should be establishing a reporting point of contact, I did see from the polling questions, some individuals here with us today are probably the point of contact, but others are not, you're working on a financial side, and some of you are not working on reporting at all, but your organization should identify a point of contact, whether that's going to be you in this session here with us today, or somebody else, that will be acting in a data analyst role at your organization if you have the capacity for that.

But there needs to be somebody that's identified to be responsible for reporting, for using the PMT and reporting out to OVC on your grant activity. You also should have a backup individual that also knows how to report on your OVC award. This is in case, I always like to use an example of somebody winning the lottery, but more realistically, this is in case somebody does depart from the organization, or is no longer supporting the grant, or the OVC award in the capacity that they initially had started, where they were in charge of reporting.

So when somebody does depart, you have the ability to keep going, and you're not going to follow to any sort of delinquency status with your OVC award, because you are unable to report, because that point of contact is no longer there, and they had, you know, all the information around reporting, and around the requirements for your performance measure reporting. You also at the real-life grant management level, you'll be analyzing the data for a multitude of different things. You'll be analyzing the data that you're collecting, that you're sharing with OVC to see where your progress falls in your OVC award, whether you are achieving your goals and objectives, or if you are falling behind and experiencing challenges, or have some opportunities, where you can increase your grant activity. You also will be analyzing all this data for future funding applications, whether it's with OVC or any other federal funding awards.

And in order to be able to talk about your award and your grant activity with your grant manager during those different reviews and monitoring events that Jessica had mentioned. So I do want to make sure that we speak a little bit about multiple OVC awards, because I know that some of our program grantees here today do have multiple OVC awards, or have acquired multiple awards over multiple fiscal years. So if that is the case, you need to make sure that at your organization's level that you are not reporting on the multiple awards, as one reporting, and you're not completing reporting by aggregating the data, or including all the data into one award. OVC's awards should be separated out, any information that you track around victim demographics and services provided should be reported out separately, our system that's had the ability to do that, but you at your organization's level, before you report out to OVC, you should be separating out services and funding provided.

All the data should always follow the funding stream, or the funding bucket is what we typically say, so for each award, you should be having a separate set of data, separate set of collection methods or systems in place for specific awards, so that the data is as accurate as possible, and so that there are no duplication of services, or of demographics that are happening, that could mess with the data on your end. If you are unable to separate out the different measures across OVC awards, please do reach out to us, we have certain tools and pro-rating strategies that we can share with you, where you can start to identify what works best for you, and you can report more accurately, and you can separate out services provided by different awards. So please do reach out, and I will be providing the contact information in future slides.

Okay, so let's dive even deeper. So we addressed what performance measurement means to OVC, why we use the data, we talked about what this really means for you, and what you will be responsible for. But let's talk about the actual specifics of performance measurement and reports. Okay, so you'll be using two different systems, just as I mentioned both of them, there's the performance measurement tool, this is the web-based reporting system, where OVC grantees electronically submit qualitative and quantitative program performance data.

So this is where you report on your performance measures. I will be speaking a little bit to the qualitative versus quantitative data that we are collecting. Then the second system is the justice grants or JustGrants system. This is, you know, an end-to-end experience. So you already should be using or have familiarity with JustGrants because you've accepted the award in JustGrants, and you already have access to that system, but again, it's the grant management system that provides OVC and federal award recipients with an end-to-end experience through different key parts of the grant management lifecycle. For our purposes, for the performance management team and the performance measures reporting, we have a small piece of our requirements that falls under JustGrants, that I will be sharing with you.

But PMT is what you'll be using quarterly, and then JustGrants is something that you also will need to use for reporting. Okay, so what types of reports are you responsible for? So again, you heard me say qualitative and quantitative. This is where this falls in. Before your quarterly performance measure reports, this is where you are collecting information on a quarterly basis. I will share the reporting schedule with you in a moment, but every quarter, you will be entering information into the PMT around the quantitative data that we are asking for. So basically the numerical data that you are collecting on how many individuals were served, or around the grant activity in general, whether that's fixed and services, services provided strategic planning that you've completed, TTA, multiple different question sets and performance measures will go in here, but it's all around numbers, right? And again, because this is a quarterly type of report, these reports are due four times a year, in January, and April, and July, and in October.

The second type of report is that semi-annual report. So this one is the qualitative report, as we refer to it. And this qualitative report, in addition to submitting your quarterly data, those numbers on a quarterly basis, you'll also be in charge of submitting narrative questions that relate to grantee and sub-grantee activities. So this is where you are going to be sharing what the numbers actually mean. This is where you have a chance to tell your story around what grant activity took place over a semi-annual reporting period, and really share any success stories, share any challenges that are happening, ask for assistance, and just, I like to say brag about the work that you're doing, because it's a very important work, and it's hard work, so it is worth bragging about, but so the semi-annual reports, those are due, again, it's in the name semi-annually, so twice a year, and that's in January and July.

Then there's a final report, this one I'm going to go ahead and assume that you all will not be responsible for final reports anytime soon, but the final report is that last report that you would submit around performance measures and grant activity, once you've expended all the funding with your OVC award, and or there's germination of the award, and that final report is where you'll aggregate, or the system does this for you, but it's aggregated report that shows the data over the life of the award, and your responses to the final report speak to the entire life of the award, as opposed to a quarterly or a semi-annual reporting period. So you don't need to worry about that one just yet.

Okay, so the reporting schedule, you heard quarterly, quarterly, semi-annual. So we follow the federal fiscal year. So we follow federal fiscal year quarters, which starts in October, on October 1st, and ends on September 30. There are four different quarters, every three months, for 90 days of grant activity, the first quarter is October 1st to December 31st, and your data for that quarter will be due on January 30, you'll have your quarterly performance measures, those quantitative numbers that are due, and your semi-annual narrative questions, where you could tell your story, that qualitative piece. And again, January to March you will report, you have 30 days to report, so you'll report by April 30, that's only a quarterly reporting period, so you're only providing numbers, and then you have April to June, that's due on July 30, and that's a semi-annual reporting period, as well, and then the last quarter, which is quarter four of each fiscal year, that's July 1st to September 30, which is due by October 30 of the fiscal year, the following fiscal year, and that includes quarterly quantitative data.

I do have to let you know that even if you are, you know, you just received your award, you haven't really started working on grant activity, you're still, you know, finalizing what your budget really means, what staffing is going to look like for the goals and objectives that you proposed, and really just understanding what the work will look like, you still have a requirement to report to OVC. You still have a requirement to report from the start date of your award to the end date of your award, even if you did not have any grant activity. What grant activity means is even if you did not spend any funding, because we are looking for OVC funding spent, and data collected on OVC funding used and spent, this is what grant activity means.

So even if you did not spend any OVC funds, or you did not complete any grant activity that you can report on in your measures, you still have a responsibility to report to OVC. This is more of a formality if you haven't started work, because the system needs to know that you are not, you know, falling delinquent, or that you're completing your requirements, and that you can move forward into another reporting period. So even if you don't have any work that's been started yet, please make sure that you are completing those reports, and you are adhering to these due dates, because they do matter, if you are past due on a report, one of the systems, the JustGrants system will show the award as delinquent, and you're unable to draw down funding when that happens. So be careful with that and make sure that you are reporting, you're assigning somebody to these reports, so they can complete them, so you don't go into delinquency status and have, you know, to work with that to get your funds unfrozen.

Okay. So for the PMT piece of this, so for PMT, as of today, all your organizations should have access, there has to be, there should be an account created for the primary point of contact at your organization. So if you have not accessed PMT or you know that your organization has not accessed PMT by now, please do reach out to us and we can help you identify who that individual that has access is, and we can work with you on adding more accounts to your organization's profile in the PMT. But accounts are created for the primary point of contact. That primary point of contact is the individual that in JustGrants is listed at in the role of the grant award administrator. So if you don't know who at your organization has access to the PMT at this point, look for that JustGrants role, as the grant award administrator, that individual is who we grant access to. This is from our contact list, this is the information that's provided to us for us to create accounts in the PMT. Anybody can have an account, you can create accounts for staff members, it doesn't have to be only the point of contact, as long as they are, you know, working on the grant, as long as they should have access to the PMT for reporting, they can have access.

We don't have a limit on how many users can be assigned to an organization, so it's unlimited, but we do always ask that organizations go in and review the users frequently, in case someone no longer works for the organization, or does not need to have access to the OVC PMT that they are deleted or removed. But so for your accounts, after account creation, which would've happened by January of this year, that point of contact would receive an auto-generated email from our OVC help desk, giving them login instructions, first time login instructions. They will then be directed to create a password, and answer a set of security questions, just, you know, for security purposes. We do encourage our grantees to not share accounts across staff members, again, there's no limit on creating on how many accounts can be created, so for security purposes, make sure that you are not sharing an account across staff members, and that each individual that needs access has proper access with their own account.

If you're not aware of any of this, you don't know that PMT has, an account has been created for your organization in a PMT and you have not been able to access the PMT, and you know other staff members at your organization haven't been able to access the PMT, again, reach out to us and we'll be able to assist you in either identifying who access was given to, or making sure that you do have proper access. Sometimes those auto-generated emails do go to junk mail, so they can be overlooked. Okay, so once you're in the PMT, once you have access to the PMT, there are multiple different things that you could do.

Again, remember this system is for data reporting back to OVC, so that's the most important piece, but there are multiple different tabs in the PMT that I'd like to share, that I'd like to show you. The default tab when you first log into the system is a profile tab. That tab just shows the contact information for your organization, and just some information about your organization, who your grant manager is for your award, and the list of the awards that are available to you. List of awards being for those that have multiple OVC awards over fiscal years, or it could be just one award if you don't have multiple. Okay. The first tab here, the OVC PMT home tab, that shows general information about OVC reporting, and it also has that reporting schedule that I just shared with you.

So it's a good tab to click on, if you want to copy and paste that schedule, if you want to print it off and have it at your desk, so you are reminded of the reporting requirements and what the due dates are, I highly encourage you to do that. That's been very helpful for me, when I used to work on the grantee side in the PMT. There's the administration tab, that's the second tab, this is a tab that shows the federal awards that you have available basically at a glance that shows you the funding amount, start and end date, and a small description of what the award proposal was for. Also under the administration tab, that is where you can add users, and create new users. And I will show you how to do that in a moment. We already mentioned the profile tab, the next one and most important tab is that enter data tab, right? That is why we use the PMT to enter data, so OVC can pull the data, and review it, and analyze it, and create data or answer data requests, or create reports from the data that you all are providing. Then there's a report tab that's mostly for you to, you know, review the status of your reports, check on current and past reports and their status, and see who completed the reports, when they were completed, but also this report tab is where you'll be generating a report that you'll be entering on the JustGrants side of the house on the semi-annual reporting period.

I will speak more to that, I know it sounds very confusing when we say it out loud, if you're not familiar with the process, but again, you're using two different reporting systems, and the PMT is the primary reporting system, but you do have a requirement to complete a report in JustGrants, and that report comes from the PMT. Again, I'll explain this more in a moment. Then we have the need help tab, that tab has a link to our resources, so you could just go there, and it'll direct you to our webpage, where we have recorded webinars, just different resources and tools that are available to you that you can use, as you work on your OVC reporting. Okay, so for creating a new user, again, it's in the administration tab, all you have to do is very simple, again, if you forget this, you can always contact their help desk, and we are more than happy to help you create users, but you will just hover over the administration tab, and go to the user management tab, and add a new user, as you see on the screen here.

All you need is a first and last name, a phone number, and an email address, and you would just hit the save button, and then that individual will receive an auto-generated email, be sure to let them know to check their junk mail in case they don't receive it within 24 hours, and then they would have first time login instructions available to them, and they can log into the system. This tab here is under the administration tab, when you hover over the user management, this is also where all the different users that have access to your organization's OVC PMT account will be listed. So do visit this page frequently, again, as I mentioned earlier, to make sure that everybody that needs access has access, and that nobody that doesn't need access anymore is still listed on here, you do have the ability to delete users that no longer need access to the system.

Okay, so for the popular tab, the enter data tab, this is where you will be selecting the federal award that you are reporting out on, and you will be selecting the reporting period. Again, for our grantees with multiple awards, please be sure to select the right award, our award numbers all look very similar, right? They have the year, the dashes, letters, they all look very, very similar too, so be mindful of that, when you are selecting the federal award, so you're tracking accurately, and you are tracking for the right funding bucket, basically. I do want to let you know that if you do not complete a report in the PMT, you will not have access to the current reporting period.

So if you do have any past due reports from prior reporting periods, the system will not unlock or open a reporting period for you, unless you complete those prior reports that are outstanding. So if you are unable to view a current reporting period, the best way to troubleshoot why that is, is to go to the reports tab, and check on the status of your prior reports. And they have to be in the complete status for you to have access to an open reporting period. Once you select your federal award, and your reporting period, you will just hit continue, and then the system will direct you to your performance measures, and the first set of questions, which are on the next slide. Okay, there they are. Okay, so the first set of questions is around grant activity, we call these question sets. The first question set speaks to the grant activity piece.

There are just two questions here, and all our grantees are responsible for these two questions. The first question asks, this is the last reporting period, where you'll have data to report on, again, you're just starting your awards, you're in the first year, so your answer should be no, this is not the last reporting period. However, when you are completing a final report, or if you've, you know, extended all your funds, you're in the final reporting period, that answer will switch to be a yes. The second question is very, very important.

This is the one that asks if there was any grant activity during the reporting period. So again, if you recall grant activity is, was there any funding used during the reporting period that you are reporting on? So if you have not used any funds, because again, you are still, you know, finalizing staffing, talking about what exactly will the work look like, you'll be answering now, and that's perfectly fine. We want accurate, honest, transparent reporting. So if you answer no, there was no grant activity, you just have to provide an explanation as to why there was no grant activity, a simple explanation, and then you'll move forward, and you will not have any data to report out on, and the system knows that. So the system will eliminate all the additional performance measures for that reporting period, because again, if you don't have grant activity, if you did not spend OVC funding, there is no need to provide data, because there's no funding to provide data on, right?

However, if you did spend funding, and you do have grant activity, you'll answer yes, and then the system, and then you save and continue, and the system will take you to your performance measures, it'll just move over to the next tab, for the question sets that are assigned to your solicitation. So as you see here, I wanted to provide two examples of what that looks like. If you were to answer no to that grant activity question, you will not have any of the performance measures available to you, you only will have the semi-annual reporting questions if it's a semi-annual reporting period, what this means is that you will only have the qualitative questions, so no numbers that you will be providing, because there was no grant activity.

However, if you did answer yes to that grant activity when you selected the save button, you'll move forward, and as you see in the bottom screenshot here, you will have access to your different question sets. These screenshots come from a federal user account, which is my test account, so as you see on the screen here, there's plenty of question sets available here that will not be the case for you all for your solicitation, you'll have specific questions that's assigned, not all of these, these are just all of the available questions sets that OVC collects measures on, but you will only have those that are available to your solicitation, and the system knows that already, you don't need to do any, you know, digging around to identify what questions sets you're responsible for.

It'll already be in the PMT for you. So once you complete, you go through the question sets, you answer the questions, if you don't have a response to a specific question, you will just enter zero, you do have to provide a response to every question in the PMT before you can submit a report, but if you don't have data collected on a specific measure, or if it doesn't apply to the work that you're doing under your award, again, remember, these measures are very generic because they have to apply to all of OVC's grantees, and your work does look different across different organizations. So if you don't have a response to a specific question, you would just enter zero, and that is equivalent to not applicable, or we did not complete any work in this category, or for this specific question. So once you've completed all the questions, and you provided a response to every single question that is a required question, you'll then be directed to the review page, where you will have the confirmation tab, as you see on the screen here, you can review the data to make sure it is all accurate, and that you've provided proper or accurate responses to all the questions, and then you'll be directed to mark the data entry as complete. Once you do so, as you see on the screen here, when you check that box, you'll save, and then the system will save your report, and will lock it from any further data entry, and your report will be completed. That's what you'll need to do for every quarterly reporting period, you will need to not only enter the data into the system, those numbers and provide those responses to the narrative questions for the semi-annual period, you also need to make sure that you submit your report for it to actually show as a complete report for that reporting period.

I do have on this screen here some tips and tricks for the performance measurement tool, be sure to use Google Chrome when possible or the latest browser that you use, if you are using an older version of a browser, the system might have some glitches and cause some problems, where you may not have access to certain show and hide functions in the system, or you may not be able to see certain questions or provide a response to certain questions. So be sure you're in the latest reporting browser. Again, be sure to enter whole numbers in the answer fields that are labeled with a number, that's mostly all the answer fields.

They all require a number response unless it's, you know, a check mark. In order to move forward and in order to submit your report, you will need to provide a response to every question that's assigned to your solicitation. For the narrative responses, be sure to only type out using plain text, do not use any special characters, any bullets, any images or anything like that, the only acceptable response would be in plain text. You could copy and paste, I actually prefer to copy and paste into the system, because you can use a Word document, while providing your responses, you can make sure that you've reviewed your responses, checked for, you know, spelling checks and errors, and then you would paste it into the system and it's all, you know, ready to go, instead of having to review it in the system, and having to scroll up and down in the small response boxes. Be sure to always save and continue, the system does time out after 30 minutes of inactivity.

So if you've entered information, and you were, you know, you got busy with a different task, and you still have the system open, but you didn't hit save and continue, the system will time out, and it will not save your data, and you'll have to reenter it. So be sure to always hit save and continue after you've entered some information, or you responded to some of the questions. Okay, oh, I did want to speak to the screenshot, so excuse me for skipping over that in the slides, but so as you see in the screenshot here, you can also hover over certain questions that are underlined, and you'll be prompted with additional instructions, that will guide you in answering a question. So if you're unsure about a question, please do hover over, and read the instructions, because they will be able to provide you with, you know, a clearer understanding of what exactly that performance measure question is asking for. Okay, so for the semi-annual reports, again, as I mentioned, there are two different reporting platforms that you will be using, mostly you are using the PMT for your quantitative and qualitative responses, however, there is a portion of reporting that goes into the JustGrants system.

So that process is a little bit difficult for some grantees, so we always like to provide, you know, a step-by-step instructions or instructions sheet that we can provide to you in order to help you when there is a semi-annual reporting period. So again, your quarterly reporting period, you're just entering data into the PMT, and submitting your reports, and that's good to go. However, for a semi-annual reporting period, you are entering your quarterly data, you're answering semi-annual narrative questions, but then you have the responsibility of taking a report from the PMT system, that's generated for you, and uploading it into JustGrants for your performance report, for your PR for that period in JustGrants. You will be able to locate that as a task in your JustGrants task every January 30 and July 30. Those are the two due dates in JustGrants.

So in order to do so, to be able to complete that requirement, you'll need to go to the reports tab, you'll navigate to the reports tab, you will find that current reporting period you're working in, and you'll find the semi-annual PDF link, as you see on the screen here. For the latest reporting period, you'll select that link, and it will generate a document for you, a PDFs document, that includes two quarters of data, and that will be a document that you need to save to your computer, and that is what you'll be uploading in JustGrants in the performance report. And it says on the screen here by January 30, but it's by January 30 and July 30. So you do have an upcoming semi-annual reporting period next month. So here is what it's supposed to look like, as you see, the PDF is the correct one, this is what it's supposed to look like, and this includes two quarters of data, as you see there's the first quarter, and then the second quarter, and it shows a total of six months, that's what the semi-annual reports look like, and then there is the incorrect one, which is if you selected the Excel link, as opposed to the semi-annual PDF link, that is the incorrect one, and if this does happen, if you do upload an Excel spreadsheet, your grant managers will request that your performance report in JustGrants be sent back to you for editing or change requested is what it's called, for you to correct that attachment, and be sure to attach the PDF as opposed to the Excel.

The reason that isn't because the Excel document only shows one quarter of data, and we are looking for a semi-annual period of reporting, so we're looking for the two quarters. So if you could remember it that way, that's a good way to look at it. Semi-annual should have two quarters of data. Okay, so for resources and support, I will just let you know that we have a lot of resources available to our grantees, on a webpage, we have a specific webpage for your program, this falls under Transforming Victim Services, the TVS programs, and we have different recorded webinars that are available to you, specific to using the PMT, specific to specific measures, and also the narrative responses, and we also even have a recording with our team, and the JustGrants team to help explain the process between the semi-annual reporting period, between the PMT and JustGrants, and what our grantees need to do, we have the performance measures that are available to you on the web page, and user guides, and a dictionary, and terminology resource to help you understand the terms that OVC uses. So there's just a lot of information on our webpage, I really, really encourage you to visit it, we've heard nothing but great things from grantees that have explored our page, and mostly the comment is "We wish we looked at the webpage sooner, because there is a lot of questions that were answered through the resources on the webpage."

If you need more support, and something that's not available on the webpage, we love to hear from our guarantees. We are more than happy to schedule welcome sessions with you or coaching sessions, or refresh for your staff members, or just talk through a performance measure question, or challenge that you're having around data reporting. Like I said in the beginning, if you're having issues with identifying data collection tools, or if you're having issues with separating out the data across multiple funding streams with OVC, we are here to help, and we're here to support you. All you have to do is email our help desk, provide your award number, as much information as possible, so we can reach out to you, and either respond through email, or schedule a session with you as you'd like. Okay, this is our contact information.

I did also include the JustGrants contact information, we are two different teams, and we have two different help desks, but we are both here, as Jessica said, available to you, to make sure that we make the reporting as smooth and easy as possible for you all. I did want to make sure that we address any questions that came in the Q&A for our team, before we turn it over back to our colleagues. I do see one of the questions related to the multiple awards. Yes, so again, if you have any issues with separating the data that you are collecting across multiple awards, or really identifying what goals and objectives, or what data should be listed under what award, if you know the funding is identical, or if you're working across awards, just reach out to us, but again, we do need separation between the data, because we do follow each different funding stream for the different awards, and that will help us avoid any inaccuracies that our data analysts would find, it would help make sure that the data is not duplicated, and that the errors are taking place across awards, or like fluctuation of the numbers, or an increase of the numbers, that is not accurate. So be sure to do that. And again, if you have any questions around how to do that, or if you're having any challenges really separating out your data, we are more than happy to talk through that with you, and show you some strategies that we have created on our end that might be helpful for your organization and your team in making sure that you're reporting as accurately as possible.

Okay, there are other questions. I also, you know, I want to make sure that we recognize that some of our Tribal grantees do have some issues with their internet, and with being able to access the system in a timely manner, we're here to help, we've had some grantees just reaching out, and being on the phone with us when we've supported them and entering their data in, or cleaning a report that was done incorrectly, so please just reach out if you're experiencing issues, and we can work out a solution together to make sure that you are reporting on time. We've gotten pretty creative and pretty crafty with making sure our grantees are taken care of, and that their reporting requirements are met. Okay, and I think that's it. I think we've addressed most of the questions that came in. Awesome, so I will go ahead and turn it over to Tamara, so she can go through the second portion of the presentation.

TAMARA FIFE: Hey, thanks Tina. Thanks. [Native language], greetings. I'm Tamara Fife, and wherever you are joining us today, I hope you're safe, and you're healthy. You've been sitting for a while, so I hope you've had time to jump up, and wiggle, and stretch, and get a little water if you need it. I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, and I'm calling in from Washington State, where I live on the traditional lands of Coastal Salish people. Today, our closest relatives here are known as the Puyallup Indian Tribe, they've lived here since time and memorial, and I raised my hands to their ancestors and leaders, who are the stewards of the land and water.

My husband and I do volunteer work as a part of Nisqually Stream Stewards, conservation projects from the base of Mount Rainier to the Salish Sea, to show our respect as guests on this land, and I'm very honored to be here with you all to talk about federal financial reports today, also known as FFRs, because why wouldn't we have an acronym for them, right? I have been doing federal grant administration for around 20 years, but I also bring my experience as being a Chief Financial Officer of a Tribal entity, where I administered about 60 grants and contracts, the majority of which were federal awards.

And so I bring that to our conversation today. I see some of my longtime colleagues and friends registered as participants here, I'm so grateful that you're here with us, that we're all here, as I'm with part of the TFMC technical team, and I'll introduce my co-presenter, who's out in the middle of the country, Christine.

CHRISTINE MYERS: Halito, thank you Tamara, and my name's Christine Myers, I'm a financial specialist with TFMC, I'm also a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. I'm joining today's webinar from an area of Arkansas, which is actually part of the Quapaw, Osage, and Caddo's Aboriginal territories, but later that area became part of the Choctaw Nation, when we were removed West of the Mississippi from our original homelands. We want to welcome you all today from wherever you're joining us, and we are just super glad that you're here. Next slide. So a little bit about TFMC, the Tribal Financial Management Center. TFMC was launched in 2018, we serve more than 300 tribal entities with over 800 Office of Justice Program Awards, OJP.

We work closely with your OVC grant managers, and the programmatic technical assistance providers, as well as those other TA providers like the PMT folks. We support you with training and technical assistance, and other resources as you manage the financial aspects of your award, our team is composed of skilled specialists, who are all uniquely qualified to serve grantees with diverse expertise in tribal communities, victim services, and financial management with service delivery that is focused on trauma-informed, culturally humble TA approach.

TFMC's support helps build a strong financial management foundation for each community's victim services program, and with that said, let's go ahead, and get started. Upon completion of this training ... One second, these are the learning objectives that we hope that you walk away with, but first I'm going to tell a corny joke. Bad jokes time. Do you know why you can't trust an atom? Tamara, do you know?

TAMARA FIFE: Why can't you trust an atom, Christine?

CHRISTINE MYERS: Because they make up everything. Ta-da.

TAMARA FIFE: Oh.

CHRISTINE MYERS: All right. So I'm sure you all groaned just like Tamara did, but I know we've all been sitting for a while, and this is a lot of information to kind of take in, and my teammates told me that you expect us to tell bad jokes, but also provide good information. So now that the bad joke is out of the way, please trust me when I tell you that this webinar is filled with good information. On the screen, these are our learning objectives. In addition to explaining the purpose of the form, the FFR form itself, we'll talk a little bit about why it's important that you file your reports quarterly, we'll go through the JustGrants screens that walk you through the filing of the report, and also the process for resubmitting a report.

Additionally, we'll talk about management of the report, and the actions for financial reporting at closeout. So let's go ahead and get started with the poll on the next slide. So what is your experience with the federal financial report? Have you never used it, used it a couple of times, complete and submit it on a regular basis, you help others to learn to use it, and or not sure. Give everybody a little bit of time. And so it looks like most of the folks, 42%, say they complete and submit it on a regular basis, so been there, done that. A few, quite a few, 31% have never used it. So it's good to know how that works, and so to talk a little bit more about that, I'm going to pass this on to Tamara. Tamara, you want to take it?

TAMARA FIFE: All right, Christine. Well, you can see the slide that there is a screenshot from the JustGrants system, we're going to use quite a few of these, and I'm sorry they don't work well in PowerPoint. However, they are great in the online video training in JustGrants for financial reports, so you can follow up this webinar if you want by watching, it's like a six-minute-training video at the link. Kristene Moore, our producer for this section, will drop that link into the chat box for you now. Thank you. So the FFR reconciles your accounting records, it indicates the total funds authorized through your, it has your cumulative obligated expenditures, and the unliquidated balance.

Those of you who do these all the time are familiar with those terms, we'll kind of go through them as we look at the screenshots, the FFR requires backup documentation showing how your drawdown funds are allocated to the approved project budget items. Your FFR helps you, your program manager, your grants manager, stay within your financial guidelines, it shows the actual funds spent, which we call expenditures, any bills to be paid or liquidated, obligations for you or your sub-recipients, but it can also document the matched contribution amount, can document how much program income was generated, and then you can enter your indirect cost for each quarter of the project. I'm going to have Kristene pop in when we get ready to talk about that.

She's had a lot of experience with that, so it's great to have her as part of our presentation team today. And you all know, I'm sure you know that you must file your FFR, even if you have zero expenditures for the quarter, right? You've got to file that form. If you need information about drawing down grant funds, that's done through a different system called the Automatic Standard Application for Payments, the acronym you might recognize ASAP, A-S-A-P, and I think Kristene Moore will also drop that link into the chat box for us. So thank you for that. The FFR has filing dates that you can see on the slide, 30 calendar days after the last day of the reporting period, the final FFR is due within 90 days of the last day of the award period. Oh, 120 days after the last day of the award period, but it can be submitted as soon as all your outstanding expenditures have been completed.

You submit your FFR in JustGrants, so you can see each quarter for October through December, due January 30th, delinquent after that date, the quarter January 1 to March 31st, due April 30th, delinquent after that date, and the same with the next two quarters, you can see those on the screen. Your FFR is submitted by your financial manager, and there's a time period that opens when it can be submitted. So if you were working on the one for this quarter, which is due July 20th, 10 days prior to the end of the quarter, the end of the quarter, June 30th, you could start this form on June 20th. And then it remains, you know, the reporting period is there till the due date, kind of hard to do because you don't know if all your expenditures will be done or accurate, and so it's generally better to wait until your quarter closes, and then start your report.

Once your delinquent date, your due date passes, and it becomes delinquent, the report will continue to be able to be submitted by your financial manager, because the financial manager has the privileges to submit, edit, resubmit, that's the most recent quarterly FFR can be reopened and resubmitted if the due date hasn't passed. So a lot of information, the financial managers will be very familiar with them, you can get the specific details in the training, we're going to give you some other resources. Christine, can you tell us why it's important to file these reports on time?

CHRISTINE MYERS: Sure can, Tamara. But first, I need to tell another corny bad joke. What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock?

TAMARA FIFE: What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock, Christine?

CHRISTINE MYERS: Look, grandpa, no hands.

TAMARA FIFE: Oh, yeah, okay.

CHRISTINE MYERS: Okay, so regardless of what kind of clock do you use, you need to watch your calendar, because timely and accurate financial reporting is critical, JustGrants will automatically consider the FFR delinquent if it's not filed on time, and so what this means is that you'll not be permitted to draw down funds. They will suspend your ASAP account, and that ASAP suspension goes into effect the day after each quarterly deadline. So just another reminder, you must file that FFR, even if you have zero expenditures. So here's another poll for you. When is your next FFR due? I expect everybody's going to do really well on this. And the results are 100% July 30th.

Congratulations, everybody, that is the correct answer. All right, so there are several reasons why, and some of those reasons are listed on this slide that accurate filing of FFRs is important, you'll also want to take a note that new awards or adjustment to awards may be restricted until your FFRs are brought current, so that means that if your financial reporting is delinquent, you won't be able to initiate or submit any budget modification GAMs, or any other sorts of GAMs in the meantime, so that's important to make sure that that's current for a lot of reasons.

During an onsite monitoring visit, OVC staff could request to review your FFRs and supporting documentation for that period of performance that is being monitored. Finally, also, the FFRs are reviewed during annual audits. This is a review of the grantees accountability for funds, which includes a review of whether all of the financial reports, including those FFRs were filed in a timely and accurate manner. These are very important reports, it's good to get to know them, feel comfortable collecting and reporting the correct information on time. So are you and your entity report ready in JustGrants? In order to file your financial reports in JustGrants, your entity has to be set up in the DOJ grants management system, it sounds like quite a number of the people on this call today are already set up in there, but there are several excellent JustGrants training materials, including the self-guided e-learning videos, which are just invaluable, those are supplemented by what we call job aid reference guides, that have infographics, providing further clarification, definitions, even visual representations of that unique system, and its processes and information.

Kristene Moore is going to go ahead, and provide that link to those resources in the chat box, and I would definitely highly recommend the training video for submitting financial reports, it is super helpful, I'd also recommend bookmarking this job aid reference guide, so that you're always accessing the most up-to-date information, these resources are updated pretty frequently, as they make changes to JustGrants, they update the supporting materials, so these tools are definitely great aids to support your success in submitting your reports. We're going to walk you through the FFR screens in this webinar to give you an overview of the process now, Kristene's going to go ahead and drop those links to the guide, and the video in the chat box, and then I'm going to slide this deck on over to Tamara to start walking us through the process.

TAMARA FIFE: Okay, thanks Christine. So you all should probably know that I didn't have the job aid reference guide bookmarked, and I had an old version, the one that I should have been using was updated earlier this year, and so Christine, I'm kind of the example of why it's a good reminder for her to share with us to bookmark that, so when it changes, you have the most recent one. I think what we found is that places where older reference guides could be more helpful were really corrected in the current one, and so we feel good about this, and so kind of what we're going to show you is what's in the reference guide, and how the flow of this report goes, and then of course, people will always be available if you need help.

So we'll look at the window that opens in your JustGrants system, I think that's what we have on the screen here. The FFR, Federal Financial Report is filed in your JustGrants account, so you can navigate to the home link, see it in the bright green box on the left hand side of that screenshot, and you'd go to your task list, and then the FFR is assigned to you appear in your my work list area, so you would open the FFR you want to edit or submit, but really, you know, speaking of Christine, I've been thinking of my own jokes, Christine, I have one for you before we go any further. What did the triangle say to the circle?

CHRISTINE MYERS: I don't know, what did the triangle say?

TAMARA FIFE: You're pointless.

CHRISTINE MYERS: Oh ..

TAMARA FIFE: I know. It's not really that funny, but I put it here to remind me that we're going to talk about the numbers in the green circles, you know, circles, they're pointless. These are not pointless. These are really important. These screenshots are from the training materials, and those materials each have these numbered green circles, and it corresponds to something that they want you to look at in the instructions. So in JustGrants, when you open the JustGrants screen, these green, highlighted circles are not going to be there. They're just here to help us put your attention on certain pieces of information. But in real reporting, they'll be pointless.

All right. Sorry, it's just getting worse. I'm just digging the hole deeper. Okay, this is your work list, the screenshot of your work list, you can see the financial reports on the fourth column over, titled case type, I hope you can see it on your screen. You open the FFR you want to edit or submit. All right? And this is a good time before you start that you want to make sure you have all the things on hand that you're going to need.

The financial information for the grant and program that you're going to work on reports for things like amounts paid or owed for direct charges, for goods, services, your personnel costs, the amount of indirect expenses charged, including your indirect rate for that quarter, the value of any third party in kind contributions, if that applies, the amount of payments made to sub-recipients, you're also going to need to know whether your entity uses a cash or accrual-based accounting system, I think we'll talk about that in a minute.

All right, that slide deck bumped out ahead of me. All right, we are on this slide now, where it says completing the FFR steps four and five, and then the training material screenshot a green circle for it that you can see once you've opened it, your recipient information appears, you see on the recipient information page, the data is prepopulated from the award document, and your entity profile. So the next step, which is the lower right hand side, number five in the green circle is to select continue and move to the next screen. See how we're just following the training guide here, the reference guide to see how to move through the screens, so we're at green circle six in the training materials, now this one, this screen has several required fields.

So the first one isn't required, because it's your recipient account number, that may be an internal number, like your grant or fund number, you can enter that for yourself if you want, select the report type, the basis of accounting. So there's a difference between expenditures prepared on a cash basis of accounting, and an accrual basis of accounting. And I don't really want to dive into those today. So what I will say is always seek advice from your tribal administration leaders, or professional accountant, if you have any questions about whether you're a cash- or accrual-basis of accounting status of your entity. Most of you are seasoned professionals, and you won't have any problem with that. So step seven is to scroll down to the transaction section, and I have ... And now we're at step eight, these fields on this screenshot are not editable, because they're not required for DOJ, cash receipts, cash disbursements, past cash on hand.

We'll go to green circle nine in the training guide, which is the next slide. All right, and slide advance again, so this is green circle nine, it is section 10. It has, again, a lot of information here. 10D, total federal funds authorized. This is pre-populated by the JustGrants system. Line 10E, the federal share of expenditures, this is system-calculated. It enters the cumulated amount of the federal share. 10F is the federal share of unliquidated obligations, and we find that a common mistake for 10F is to enter the entire remaining balance of the grant award. But remember, remember, unliquidated obligations should not include any amount that has been reported in the federal share of expenditures, or that corresponds to future commitment of funds, like a long-term contract, for which an obligation or expense has not been occurred.

This section, 10F, should only include direct and indirect expenses incurred, but not yet paid or charged to the grant, including, including those amounts due, any subrecipients or contractors. So 10F is a line that you want to pay attention to, 10G is a total federal share, the sum of it's prepopulated from your award document lines, ENF, 10H is your unobligated balance of federal fund expenditures, this is prepopulated, because it's calculated line D minus line G, and then 10I is your total recipient share required. You shouldn't have a number there, because your grants don't require a recipient share. I have a note here that says, "A federal fiscal year 21 change requires cumulative expenditures entered into line 10E, 10F, 10J, 10N, and 10M are defined as, cumulative expenditures are defined as, the amount from the award's inception, to the end of the reporting period. Cumulate expenditures, the amount of awards from the award's inception to the end of the reporting period." All right, let's go on. When an amount is entered in 10E, a pop-up box appears on your screen, asking "Does the amount entered reflect cumulative expenditures amount from beginning of the project period to the end date of the reporting period?"

We just talked about that, right? If you select yes, you'll be directed to the next data filled. If you select no, you'll be directed back to 10E to start over again. If you attempt to submit this FFR without editing 10E, after selecting no, experience tells us you will get an error message. 10E will also have an error message, if the amount in 10E is less than the previously reported 10E amount. So that's a little tricky, a little tricky there. Let's go on to the next slide.

This is green circle 10 in the reference guide, and we're still in section 10 of the form, it's a big section. You'll be entering information in following fields, 10I, it's discretionary awards, the recipient share required will be populated from your budget summary, if you have a formal award, the recipient share will need to be inserted. 10J, recipient share of expenditures, you enter that as appropriate. 10K, the remaining recipient share will be line I minus nine J, it's auto calculated, 10L, your total federal income earned, 10M, program income expended in accordance with the deduction alternative, 10N, program income expended in accordance with the additional alternative, and 10L, unexpended program income. Step 11 is to scroll to the bottom of the page.

Okay, now on the slide, you might see that we're at green circle 14, and we're moving on to section 11, the indirect cost section of form. I think I had a note on mine that said I don't really know what happened to the green circles between where we were, and where we are now, but this is where we are now, green circle 14 in section 11. This is the part on indirect cause that I told you, I'm going to ask Christine to come in and talk about it, so Christine, can you come back in, and give us your professional information about dealing with this section of the report?

CHRISTINE MYERS: Absolutely, Tamara. Okay, so first thing to know is that indirect costs, indirect expenses are not cumulative over the entire award period in the same way as the other costs are. Indirect costs are negotiated with the Tribe's cognizant agency, as many of you are aware, with a specific start and end date, and that base that it's calculated on for those costs differs from tribe to tribe, depending on those agreements. The indirect rate is applied to a base, that is the total of the qualifying expenses incurred within the timeframe that the rate is effective, rather than the project period start and end date.

For example, let's say you have a three-year-project, and you could have, let's say, three or four applicable IDC rates over the course of that project, and that could be active. Now each of those rates would have their own lines added to this section, where you can see, you can add an item predetermined rate there, 11B rate 75%, so for each of your periods that the rates are active, a different line would be added. So each of these rates have their own lines added to this section, over the entire project period, and you would still need, those would still need to be reported in each quarterly report through the end of the grant. But note that if your rate is expired, you can't obligate, expend, or draw down indirect expenses for that time period, until you have a new approved rate. What that means is that you would not report the indirect for that time period on the FFR for that quarter, if you don't have an approved rate for it. But you would still report the IDC charge for the past periods as expenses.

So 11A, you would choose the type of rate, the fields to complete after this step may vary, depending on the type of rate that's selected, 11B, you would enter the approved indirect cost rate or rates in effect during the report period, so this would be the rate, and then you would have possibly more than one line, and then for 11C, the period from and period to, you would enter the beginning and ending effective dates for the indirect cost rate, 11D is the base, you enter the base amount, to which the approved rate in 11B was applied, so all those costs that are included in the base, according to the negotiated agreement.

And then you'd refer to 45 CFR 75.2 to get more guidance on calculating your base, it should also be in your indirect cost rate agreement, if you have a copy of that, it's good to have that on hand. 11E is auto calculated by multiplying 10B by 11D, and 11F is the federal share, so the federal share amount will report it in 11E, and that'll be the amount charged. So the circle 14 is actually where you select continue, and then I'm going to slide the deck back to you, Tamara.

TAMARA FIFE: Christine, thank you so much. I can just tell how invaluable your experience is at helping people navigate this report, and you did a much better job with that difficult part than I could, so thank you for that. So we are at green circle 15, and it's step 15 on this slide, so magically we're back in sync with our green circles and our steps, you can see, it's the remarks and certification screen, you'll enter text in box 12, I have a note here that says, "Remember to share that if the amounts in line 10E or 10J are less than the previous reporting period, you must enter some narrative in box 12 under remarks, explaining the discrepancy", because guess what? Failure to do so will result in a validation error. So any amounts in line 10E or 10J that are less than the previous reporting period, be sure to put your remarks in there.

Okay, completing it, step 16 through 18, on the page in the guide, 16 and 17 are on a page on like a screenshot, and then 18 is on a screenshot, they're all together on this, it's really how to upload supporting documentation, it's not a required step, you want to keep it, as they talked about in the beginning, so in case you have a site visit from your program manager, you'll want to be sure to have that, but you don't have to upload documents, supporting documentation. Okay, then we arrive at the end of the report with green circles 19 and 20 in the certification section. You review the certification information, it will be pre-populated with the information for the financial manager, select the finish button down on the bottom right-hand side, and then it's routed for review and an approval. So after you submit it, a green banner at the top of your screen will tell you that the report has been submitted correctly, hopefully we gave you good information, and all your Ts got crossed and Is dotted, the status, the message will say status pending, UFMS indicates that your report's been sent to the United Financial Management System for validation in the Department of Justice accounting system.

You cannot make any changes while that report is being reviewed in UFMS, but once it's been validated, the status will change to resolved, completed, and then it becomes possible to edit and resubmit a report if you need to. So you can see by now how important it is for you to access the training and job aid materials in JustGrants when you're learning to do financial reporting, and because you do them quarterly, you know, when you're doing them, it helps to have these extra resources. I think Kristene Moore put them in the chat box, but if she wants to put them in there, that's again, that's fine, I'm going to go back to Christine Myers now, and see what she wants to talk about next. Christine.

CHRISTINE MYERS: Oh hey, thank you Tamara. It looks like we have another poll. So the poll this time is who submits your FFR? Would that be the grant award administrator, your financial manager, alternate grant manager, or other? And I'm betting we're going to have a landslide, everybody's going to know this. And ... Financial manager, 86%, 14% other. Awesome, awesome job. It's the financial manager.

So that's the only role they have set up that could submit an FFR currently. So now we're going to switch over to talking about resubmissions, and editing reports in your FFRs, in JustGrants, so you've already submitted a report, but let's say you reported indirect costs, and you shouldn't have, and you need to go back and you take that off of there, and then resubmit it, so the financial manager can go in, and edit a submitted FFR only if it's the most recently submitted one, and that the next FFR has not yet been generated. Tamara, can you go ahead and take us through that process of editing and resubmitting an FFR, please?

TAMARA FIFE: I can take you through that just as soon as I unmute myself. I don't know how many years we're going to do virtual meetings before I remember to do that before I start talking. Okay, so my mic's on, we have the edit and resubmit, Christine told you that there's a window of time that you can do this, you know that you have to be resolved, completed, with your original submission, but now you want to go in and make a change.

So these, again, are screenshots from the job aid reference guide, step one, go to your homepage, select awards from the left-hand column, step two, select the award ID associated with the FFR you want to edit and resubmit, and then step three, which can be seen on the image in this slide, you select view case, view case to edit and submit the FFR. And remember these aren't just screenshots from the job aid. So next, you choose the actions menu on the top-right to open the FFR, and where you see green circle six on the left-hand side, you make edits as needed, you have to include a comment in box 12 explaining the reason for reopening this and editing it, okay, and that's after you do that, then you pop down to the bottom right, and select submit. Fairly straightforward, right? Okay, good. Christine, what's next?

CHRISTINE MYERS: Well, Tamara, I think folks might want to view the FFR online and print it out. We definitely encourage folks to save these electronically, but also to print them out, and keep them in their grant's notebook, where they keep all of their documentation, so they have a physical backup, as well as a digital one for all of the items and documentation on their awards. So once you're on that specific award page in JustGrants, you'll just want to scroll down towards the bottom of that page, and find the federal financial reports option in the the award section, right there by that circle number four, and then you'll select the report number over here on the left, circle number five, with the little box around it, green box, in that leftmost column of the report, pick the one you'd like to view or print as shown, and then remember that this screenshot, it's from the training manual, once again, these little green boxes and circles are not on the actual platform, so you won't see them. Remember, the circles are pointless, except they aren't.

All right, so once you select the FFR in the next screen, it will open in view-only mode. It's going to open in view-only mode, and it looks a lot like this. You can view the submitted report in its entirety, and as you can see the view FFR process, it's not very complicated. So on the next screen, the report printing process starts where you look up here to the left-hand corner, you're going to see that little actions tab with the dropdown, you're going to click on that little caret, and select print, and then from the federal financial report, you open the actions menu that's going to print, give you the option, you can choose to save it as a PDF, and or you can print it to hard copy, like I said, we suggest that you do both, so let's launch a poll now and see how you all maintain your FFR records, speaking of which. Do you print a copy of your FFR for your paper grant notebook or grant file, and or place a PDF in your electronic grant file? Both by 70%, but some also electronic and paper.

That's great. That looks good. Excellent. All right, so next slide, we're going to talk a little bit about what actions, you know, we take during closeout. So at the end of your grant award period, you're going to be required to submit that final FFR, where you kind of reconcile that final FFR with your internal accounting records, maybe do your budget to actuals. It's important to have all the entries in the accounting system supported by adequate source documentation, like the original invoices or contracts. That final FFR is due at the end of the 120 day period following the last day of the grant award period, so it's a good idea to file it as early as possible, in case anything kind of comes up, report all your allowable costs incurred both at the grantee and sub-recipient level, make sure you have obligated all of your funds before the award end date, an obligation is a debt that's been incurred for the grant, but not yet paid out. The final financial report should reflect a balance of zero for obligations.

The final FFR, zero for the obligation section. Grantees who have drawn down funds in excess of their federal expenditures, they're going to end up having to return those unused funds to the awarding agency, and then submit their final report. You'll want to report the amount of federal funds returned, if that's the case, an obligated balance of federal funds on line 10H of the final FFR, and along with that, any unexpanded program income returned on line 10O of the final FFR.

So we've come full circle now to the learning objectives, we're back to looking at, you know, what we should have gotten out of this, we shared at the beginning that we hoped that you would know what the purpose of an FFR was, and why it was important to file timely and accurate, and we're hoping that you feel confident, a lot of you guys already know what you're doing, a lot of you folks already know what you're doing, and for those of you who don't, or who are on the programmatic side, we hope this has been informative, and has increased your knowledge of the process, we hope that you know where you can go for resources, and also if you need any additional support, and finally, that this helps prepare you for your responsibilities in completing FFRs at closeout. And one about, one final joke before we jump off. What did the ocean say to the beach, Tamara?

TAMARA FIFE: Okay, well, I came on camera, so we can do the answer together, Christine. What did the ocean say to the beach?

CHRISTINE MYERS: Nothing, it just waved.

TAMARA FIFE: Thanks you guys for letting us be part of today.

JESSICA ANDREW: Kristene Moore's now going to go through any questions that might have been unanswered, or any other questions that might have arisen.

KRISTENE MOORE: Awesome job, Tamara and Christine. So it looks like most of the question, or all of the questions that were asked in the Q&A section have been answered, and I don't see that any additional questions came through in the chat, so I'll just give everybody a little bit, maybe just a minute or so, if you have anything else you want to either put in the chat or the Q&A, we can get to those now. Okay, so I don't see any additional financial reporting questions, there is a general question about reviewing recordings of these trainings, and all of these trainings both last week, today, and the future ones will be recorded and accessible in the future. I'm going to go ahead, and just close out our section right here for the Tribal Financial Management Center, and so say that ...

TAMARA FIFE: Kristene, there is a question in the Q&A box, I think.

KRISTENE MOORE: Did one just come through?

TAMARA FIFE: Yep.

KRISTENE MOORE: Oh, thank you, Tamara. So keeping the paper or electronic files of your FFRs required, for this particular situation, it's always recommended while they are saved in the JustGrants system, it's recommended to also have it either in your digital or paper files, with the backup documentation that justifies the values that you put into that report. So kind of having a one-stop shop that somebody can pull if it's ever questioned on where those numbers came from. Again, they are always accessible in JustGrants, but I would highly recommend also having your own copies, as well. Okay. And I think that is it, so TFMC is here to answer any questions related to financial reporting, or anything else financial management-related. I will put our contact information in the chat one more time, but I am going to go ahead and pass it back over to OVC. Thanks, everyone.

JESSICA ANDREW: Thank you so much Kristene, and thank you TFMC and the PMT team for providing such valuable information to help everyone. Before we round out, we just want to ask one more polling question for you all, so we're interested to know more, what other training and technical assistance can we provide if we have some options up on the polling questions, you want to learn more about financial issues, programmatic, victim services, program sustainability grant compliance, please enter as many options as you'd want, and you can also enter your responses into the chat, as well. Okay, we'll give that another minute. And Lauren, whenever you're ready to close that poll. Okay, it looks like we can use some TA on everything. And that is great news, because we love the opportunity to collaborate and to work together.

So as we are wrapping up, and we're going to go to Q&A here in a second, if you have specific topics that you would like information on, put those into the chat for us. We would love to hear your thoughts, especially as we just got talking about the PMT, performance reporting, as well as financial reporting. Any ideas that you have, we would love to hear them, so we can incorporate those in future sessions, whether it be in a new grantee webinar, or a specific session on a specific topic. Also, with that, just so you all know, we are going to have two more webinars that are going to be happening and over the next 2 weeks, yes, 2 weeks.

The next one is going to be focusing on compliance and allowables, we're really going to talk through special conditions, how to get those special conditions removed, and what the requirements for those. And then on Tuesday, the 27th, TFMC is going to join us once again to talk a little bit more about finances, how to submit budget specifications, touching a little bit more on FFRs and additional information.

And so next, again, if you all have any final thoughts or any questions, please enter them either in the chat or the Q&A box, and we'll give it a minute or two, and then we'll wrap here in a second. Okay. Seems that we don't have any questions, I think we are good to close this presentation. Again, we want to thank you all for your time today, and joining our second webinar, we hope it was helpful to you in your journey in learning more about grants and working with OVC, and we hope you have a great rest of your day. So thank you so much for joining.